Ann Arbor Hosting Connected Vehicles Conference

Industry, academic and policy experts are in Ann Arbor, Mich., this week for a connected cars conference.

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute is hosting the 2014 Global Symposium on Connected Vehicles and Infrastructure.

The event runs Monday through Wednesday. A special energy workshop will be held Wednesday and Thursday.

Ann Arbor is home to an ongoing experiment involving so-called talking cars that University of Michigan and government officials hope will lead to safer roads. Thousands of wirelessly connected cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles are operating in the city as a part of the study conducted by UMTRI.

The vehicles are being used to study how cars equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication devices interact with each another and with wirelessly equipped infrastructure, such as intersections and street lights.